Snyder Cut – some thoughts

Make your own future.

Hello all, and welcome to another exciting blog post. I just wanted to post some real quick thoughts about the Snyder Cut after watching it and sleeping on it.

I just want to preface this with a spoiler warning. I’m going to try to not spoil anything for those who haven’t seen it and still want to see it without knowing the juicy bits (although most everything is on Twitter already), but I just want y’all to know; Spoiler Warning (probably, maybe, I don’t know).

I will start this by admitting that I was wrong about this movie. I was under the impression that this movie wasn’t going to be good until the beginning of the week it came out. As much as I love the Justice League, I was completely prepared for this movie to not be any good. Boy was I wrong.

Part of my desire to see it fail is my dislike of Snyder’s fanboys. If you like Zack Snyder, that’s fine, I like him too. If you worship him and think his vision for the DC universe is the only one that matters and movies like Shazam! and Birds of Prey are bad movies because of the lack of Snyder’s involvement, then I have a problem. Snyder makes his movies look good, and ZSJL is no different, but Snyder’s writing skills leave more to be desired.

I’m not going to talk a whole bunch about his original plans for the DCEU, that’s a post for another time, but long story short, they weren’t all that great. But just like he changed some of ZSJL around, he could’ve adjusted those plans to fit the larger picture.

Anyway, enough about that, let’s talk about the movie.

Initial thought I had after watching was “man, this movie is good.” As mentioned before, I did not have high hopes this movie but I came away from it very impressed. What impressed me the most, I think was the prevalence of a coherent story. Justice League (2017) plays out like someone is telling you a story, but without the important parts such as, “how did the characters get there?” “who is that character” “what is that character’s motivation?” and so on and so forth. ZSJL makes sure all of those questions are answered and then some.

Another pro were the characters. Zack Snyder redeemed multiple characters in his cut and seeing those specific characters shine makes you wonder why those scenes were cut out in the first place. Cyborg was given more to do, and The Flash, Batman, and Steppenwolf were improved upon from the theatrical cut. The scene at the end with The Flash is almost a perfect scene. Everything from the music to the acting in that scene is *chef kiss*. The only con in that scene is the CGI, which makes certain characters look like rubber dolls.

The biggest downside to this movie is the runtime. As much as I enjoyed this movie, the 4 hour runtime is dreadful. Multiple times I paused the movie and let out an inhuman sound as I realized there’s still more movie left. The movie is divided into parts, some parts being longer than others, but part 6 is the longest by far. Part 6 starts at around the 2:50 mark. You probably look at that number and go “There’s only an hour and ten minutes left” which yes, there is only an hour and ten minutes left from the beginning of part 6 to the end of the movie but at that time in the movie, the team just revived Superman. They haven’t even figured out where Steppenwolf is holed up at, Superman still acting strange because he was dead about 15 minutes ago, and everyone hates each other because they got their butts kicked by Superman. All this happens with an hour and ten minutes left until the epilogue.

Another con that’s not as egregious as the runtime is the CGI. The CGI is better than it’s 2017 counterpart but the CGI is still bottom tier for it to be 2021. I believe Zack was only given $70 million to finish the movie which seems like a lot, but Birds of Prey had a budget of $85 million, and that was a smaller movie. I can’t really blame him for the way it looked, we are in a pandemic after all, but it just looked strange in more scenes than one.

If you’re not a fan of Snyder and his work, I won’t recommend this movie to you. To be frank you probably won’t enjoy it. It’s everything wrong with Snyder’s films on a much larger scale. If you like Snyder and his work, then by all means, continue to stream this movie, because you will enjoy this. He made this movie for the fans and I’ve seen nothing but good response from them.

Zack Snyder’s Justice League is a movie made for its fans with good action and occasional bright spots from its characters, but it’s 4 hour runtime may keep you from turning it on in the first place.